There's a lot of interesting stuff on this mailing list, especially when it's
a bit more active than it has been lately.
In the past it has been a real blessing to be able to download the raw text
concatenations of the mailing list messages (split into several files of one
megabyte or more) and peruse them off-line at my leisure, searching for
someone's turn of phrase or a long-forgotten analogy.
On the Unicode Web site, the page "Archives of the Unicode Mail List" located
at
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/
has been changed. It now features a WebSearch 2.01 engine that requires me
to type a user name and password (revealed on the page, so no security is
gained), then presents me with a "search results" page displaying a tiny
snippet of each matching message, and no author name.
Alternatively, I can follow the link to "the raw archives," but unfortunately
these are not raw either. The messages are split into separate HTML files,
and presented by author, subject line, and date. Now I can browse the
subjects, but not the contents (and we know not everybody is diligent about
subject lines anyway). In either case I have to go on-line to search the
archives.
These newfangled archiving contraptions are neat and all, but can we ALSO
please have the old raw files back? One of Sarasvati's strongest arguments
for not switching the mailing list to Yahoo or whomever was that she would
have complete flexibility and control over the contents and layout. This is
a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that. There's no reason we can't have
both the old way AND the new way of retrieving the archives.
I am encouraged by an italicized note on the mail archive page:
> This is an initial version of the archives. The searching may
> be slow. We may change the search engine in the future, and/or
> re-organize the way the archives are set up. Please send any
> feedback to the public mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Consider it sent.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
